Day 62: Truth About Robots

Vela Luka, Croatia

As I had written, I talked to Bobby a few days ago regarding my desire to quit the internship and just paid for the last month that I’d owe him.

The work here had been hard but I thought it paid off. I learnt a lot. My courses were brilliant. Tom was a fantastic mentor. But lately, such was no longer the case. Ever since I had been assigned another instructor, Billy (Bobby’s brother), the past few courses were taught half-arsed. It felt as though he just wanted to get them done with so he could get us back to work (ie. scanning, painting at Bobby’s house and whatnot).

This afternoon’s incident confirmed my feeling about this notion. Billy asked to see my Navigation Specialties knowledge review. I told him I didn’t finish it because I couldn’t answer half of the questions. While I was mopping, he told me to just go to the computer because he had pulled up the instructor manual for the course and I should be able to find my answers there. I managed to locate the information for some questions but not all. A couple of those required that I understood how to use a “course plotter” and the manual clearly said that the instructor should show his/her students how to use one. I had not even the slightest clue what a course plotter was, let alone working it. Also, speaking to David made me realize that there’s an accompanying DVD to the course, and I had no clue about that either. No wonder I got some of the questions wrong! I confronted Billy about this and he simply told me yes, there’s a DVD and that I could watch it after work. It became apparent to me that we were treated more like workers than training staff members or students and that corners were being cut on our courses.

So later in the evening, I talked to Bobby about this and said that I wasn’t happy with the whole set up here and would like to quit. I would rather pay him off for the month that I owe him and had my courses taught to me properly. He started coming up with numbers and logic that did not quite make sense. He said if I did not finish my internship then I was pretty much a tourist diver and that I would pay guest price for everything, including the dives I had done here. If I were indeed a guest diver, I didn’t reckon I would have to carry all cylinders, load them onto the boat, entertain the other guests, drop and pull up anchors, unload the cylinders, fill them etc., would I?

In any case, I was quite upset after my conversation with him and he told me to take the day off tomorrow to think think this through before I came to a decision. I told him I didn’t need the day off but he insisted.

There was a ruckus outside the dive center after our talk. Apparently, the president of Croatia was in town so there were police forces on ships and helicopters. I totally missed the whole thing  except for this picture of a helicopter flying off because I was too bummed out. I went straight home.

Croatian phrase of the day:

Boli me glava = I have a headache